One of our clients recently came to us wanting to build an online network for their advocates. This network was to facilitate conversation and discussion, as well as offer an online customer channel for all concerned.
At Absorb, our experience tells us that whilst setting these networks up can be quite straight forward, actually getting users to frequent and derive value from them is something quite different. Whilst proprietary networks have worked in the past, these days Social Networks are all encompassing and so we advised our client to revive their LinkedIn Group, which at the time had very limited activity.
LinkedIn Groups are very successful. Indeed, one of the Groups I’m a member of sees hundreds of member interactions with every Discussion posted. The key with these Groups is to reach what I would call a ‘critical volume’ of members. Realistically, only a minor percentage of members will get involved with posting and commenting on new Discussions and News – the bread and butter of any successful network. Therefore reaching this ‘critical volume’ is essential, and if possible activity should be ramped up in order to reach these volumes quickly.
So, how do you promote a LinkedIn Group and how many members is enough? Firstly, you’re aiming for at least 500 members, preferably closer to 1,000 in order to get sufficient volume of member activity. This will enable the members to offer a broad scope of input and attract other’s to get involved.
In order to promote the Group, here are a few key actions;
- Upload a CSV of your email contacts list. This is easily the biggest and most powerful tool at your disposal. If you have an email list of advocates / members / customers then upload this to LinkedIn and send away. This bulk action enables you to invite everyone in one send out
- Add a LinkedIn logo to your website
- Add a blog post introducing your new Group and inviting everyone to join
- If any of your advocates have a blog / Twitter / LinkedIn account, invite them to join the Group and ask them to post about their involvement
- Post a link to your Group in a related existing LinkedIn Group (best check with the Group owner first to get the all clear – spamming never get’s anyone very far)
Posted: April 12, 2010 @ 1:29 pm